


Cages and Cunning

by Persephone_Kore



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captivity, F/M, Gen, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 21:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3664830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone_Kore/pseuds/Persephone_Kore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Klaus has been taken prisoner for the amusement of the Heterodyne heirs. They are not thrilled.</p><p><i>Prompt: Klaus ends up in Mechanicsburg as a captive/hostage. Either because Old Lord Heterodyne, before his untimely demise, wanted a <s>plaything</s> playmate for his children, or</i>...</p><p>(Excerpting the part of the prompt I actually used.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cages and Cunning

* * *

Klaus was grimly proud of himself. Yes, all right, he'd been captured. Yes, he was seriously worried about his home, although he was _pretty_ sure everyone had been riding away again so there might not be too much more damage. But even after being disarmed he'd given the Jägermonsters enough trouble that they consulted the Heterodyne about how to transport him. 

Yes, _all right_ , now he was decidedly battered and being carried triumphantly into Mechanicsburg crouched in a giant birdcage. But at least he hadn't given up. 

One of the Jägers was carrying his cage dangling from one long outstretched arm off the side of a horse, with no apparent distress to either arm or horse, which did seem designed to emphasize Klaus's relative helplessness and the Jäger's strength. Especially when he decided to _shake the cage_. "Hoy!" he shouted to a comrade up on the wall. "Ve got a _fun_ von!"

Klaus pushed himself upright again and glowered balefully at the Jäger's eyesocket. He was almost sure he'd fractured it. Didn't seem to be inconveniencing him much, sadly. 

As they passed through the gate, a wall of sound slammed into him with the force of despair. 

When the heated gloom receded enough that he could claw his way back to full consciousness, he was indoors, the Jäger was gone, and the cage seemed to be being propelled mechanically alongside the Heterodyne. It glided through a doorway and into a blast of frigid air. 

Into a room full of corpses, variably whole or in parts, and two children in lab coats conferring feverishly over a slab. 

Klaus swallowed. It wasn't the smell. Mostly. It was just a lab. But it was a _Heterodyne_ lab. 

"Yes, there's good," said the Heterodyne, and the cage settled to the floor. Klaus peered up through the top, trying to see what he could have been talking to, and still hadn't figured it out when the Heterodyne bellowed, "Boys!" That snapped their attention to him. "Look what I brought you!"

The older one -- William, that was his name, and he couldn't be _that_ much younger than Klaus, after all: Klaus remembered with the dim haze of very early childhood hearing there was a new Heterodyne heir -- looked from his father to the cage and then back again with an expression of baffled dissatisfaction that left Klaus feeling decidedly insulted. "Um... _why_?"

"You _said_ you wanted a friend from outside Mechanicsburg, remember?" the Heterodyne pointed out, sounding pleased with himself. "I got you one. If you don't like him you can use him for parts and I'll find another."

William removed one bloody glove before scrubbing the heel of his hand across his forehead. This would have been more reassuring as a hygienic precaution if he had not pulled it off with his teeth. "Father, the idea was to go out and meet people. Captives aren't exactly a novelty."

"But this one is yours. You complain every time I take you to get your own," the Heterodyne said. "Anyway, come on, he did some damage to the Jägers."

They both looked at Klaus, rather gratifyingly startled. "And we need to patch them up?" the younger one asked. Barry, he thought. 

The Heterodyne eyed him. "You're starting breakthrough," he said, not really unkindly. "I know it's distracting. But you're not in it deep enough to get out of chores yet."

"It's not that," William said quickly, while Barry looked indignant. "It's just, he did _that_ much damage?"

Their father grinned at them. Klaus was reasonably sure the Heterodynes didn't undergo the same mysterious treatment as the Jägers, but Saturn Heterodyne did seem to have an excessive number of teeth, or maybe it was just the attitude. "Oh, yes. You'll have to be careful with him if you let him out. Come on."

They followed, but Barry turned toward the cage on his way out, and Klaus thought it looked like he mouthed, "Sorry."

He must have misunderstood that.

The door shut, and Klaus was left alone in the room rull of corpses, breath fogging the air. At least, he hoped he was alone, because if any of their victims were still alive there wasn't anything he could do for them. He sighed and sat down on the floor of the cage, debating whether resting bruises against the bars before they could swell would be worth the added overall chill. 

On reflection, maybe sitting wasn't worth it either. He shifted back to a crouch, then stood as far as possible, which wasn't very. The bars were too close for even a fairly small child to slip between -- he couldn't even get a foot through. Not booted, anyway. He could get a hand out, _fairly_ near the lock, and he went through his pockets -- the Jägers had taken away the obvious weapons and, unfortunately, his coat, but they hadn't done a complete search. 

He was trying to reach the lock with a small framing square when the door opened again. He jerked his hand back inside, banged his wrist on the bars and fumbled the square with cold fingers. It clattered against the floor of the cage and landed just outside. Brilliant. Really. 

It was a woman this time, and she regarded him for a moment and then cast her eyes to the ceiling. " _Really?_ "

Klaus tried reaching out to retrieve the square while she wasn't looking and started when a booming voice replied, "This _is_ where they left him." 

"Well, it's certainly not where they're keeping him. Despite how much time they've been spending in here, I don't believe they were planning to experiment with hypothermia. Let him out." 

"He's dangerous."

"He won't attack me. And it wouldn't do him any good if he did." She came over to the cage, stooped to pick up his lost square, and passed it through the bars to him. Klaus blinked. "I'm sorry about this. My sons have been a little preoccupied lately. Castle?"

There was a metallic click- _clunk_ , and the cage door swung open. 

"Thank you," she said -- apparently to the Castle? -- and offered Klaus a hand to steady him as he emerged. 

"Thank _you_." He hesitated. "Lady Teodora?" It had been a treaty marriage of sorts. Not an alliance. She'd been claimed. 

She smiled wryly. "Yes, I'm stuck here too."

"You keep _harping_ on that," said the disembodied voice. 

"It reminds me if I don't," she told Klaus. "And you're...?"

"Klaus Wulfenbach, my lady." 

"Oh, _dear_. Well, I'll begin by warning you that Castle Heterodyne is aware, animated, and full of consciously directed traps. It knows you are wanted alive, but if you try to run it might not be picky about retrieving you in one piece." 

"I... appreciate the advice." He followed her out of the laboratory into warmer air with some relief. "No point in trying to escape, then?" Could he lull the Castle into a sense of complacency?

"Well, I wouldn't go that far, but my family's home demonstrably won't hold up to a concerted Heterodyne assault." 

"I'd like to see you try," said the Castle. 

"Of course you would," she said. "Then you'd know where your security holes are."

"I don't have any," huffed the Castle. Presumably it did not actually have to breathe, but it did huff. 

"So you say!" She smiled wryly at Klaus. "Although frankly, it's paranoid enough as it is. Come with me and have something to eat, and I'll look at your injuries."

"I'm all right, mostly." 

"You're in remarkably good condition, yes, but I assure you you're going to be sore once the numbness and adrenaline wear off." 

"...Yes, my lady." 

"Good. Come with me and I'll tell my husband I'm taking you." 

Klaus blinked and tried to think how to ask if this was a good idea without saying something that might get them in trouble with the Castle. Oh. "Won't the Castle tell him anyway?"

Lady Teodora rolled her eyes. "The Castle is a marvel of engineering with a mind modeled on a Heterodyne who was, apparently, not above pranking his relatives. _I_ do not rely on it to pass messages." After a walk through corridors full of glowering gargoyles, leering skulls (Klaus wasn't entirely sure how that worked), and paintings that he was fairly sure changed when he wasn't looking straight at them, she held up a hand to stop him and said, "Stand there and don't try to look into the laboratory."

"I wouldn't let him," said the Castle. 

"And that would be why I warned him." Lady Teodora picked up what appeared to be a femur, smacked a gong, and leaned against the wall beside a large fanged mouth that Klaus assumed had a door in it. 

There was a pause.

She sighed. "Castle, open the door, please."

"No peeking!"

"I assure you that one of the last things I am likely to do is duplicate the biological secrets of the Jägers, but I think I can manage not to peek, too."

There was a creak of hinges from inside the mouth and then, incongruously, a throat-clearing noise from everywhere. When it ended there was merely a strange almost-musical buzzing sound coming from, presumably, inside the laboratory. Lady Teodora called, "Saturn?" 

Nothing. 

"Saturn!" A pause. "Bill? Barry?" 

Still nothing.

Lady Teodora sighed, looked up at the ceiling, and then shouted, in a credible Mechanicsburg accent, " _Hoy! Sveethot!_ "

The buzzing halted. The Heterodyne sprang out from between the fangs, seized Lady Teodora by both arms, whirled her away from the wall, and kissed her passionately. Klaus looked away, embarrassed and feeling as if he ought to intervene even though that was in practical terms impossible. Political marriages, even to end wars, weren't unusual, but the Heterodyne approach.... 

The kiss ended, eventually, and the Heterodyne absently rebuilt Lady Teodora's coiffure, now adorned with a few streaks of what was probably Jäger blood. "What did you want?" 

She pointed back down the hall at Klaus. "I am taking the boys' new friend," she said, a little drily, "somewhere they won't have to thaw him out when they want him. We'll be at the house." 

The Heterodyne shook his head with an expression of grave disapproval. "You're taking him out of the cold lab and then putting ice on his bruises, aren't you? Now how is that efficient?" 

"I believe I shall manage the energy expenditure, thank you. On which note, do you think they'll be joining us for dinner, or were the casualties too severe?" 

He rolled his eyes. "He did more damage than I was expecting, but let's not exaggerate, here. I'll send them over to play with him later." 

"My thanks." Lady Teodora leaned up to kiss her husband, rather less vigorously, and then turned deliberately away from the door as he went back into it. "There. Now there won't be any questions." 

"That's... good?" Klaus said, more uncertainly than he intended.

"It's less confusing, _and_ he's agreed to send them to me for dinner instead of spending half the night in the laboratory."

"I could have had dinner sent in," said the Castle. 

"But you'd have to listen if he told you they were all busy," said Lady Teodora. "Wouldn't you?"

"Well..." The Castle harrumphed. "Missing one meal will hardly endanger the line."

"But it's still better if they don't. Besides, I've been experimenting with desserts."

"The Heterodynes are not your experimental subjects," boomed the Castle.

Lady Teodora rolled her eyes. "They are my sons, and they like fudge." She set off again. "Come along, Klaus." 

Klaus followed her. Things kept glaring at them along the way, and once when he was trailing slightly she took his arm and yanked hard forward. He leaped, and a blade slammed into a slot in the floor behind him. "...Thank you."

"It's not supposed to hurt you without permission," she said, "but we might have had to find you new clothes." 

Klaus looked down at himself. His clothing had suffered somewhat from the battle as it was. "Well--"

Lady Teodora rubbed a hand across her mouth and he smiled wryly at her so she'd stop trying not to laugh. Her amusement was reassuring, in a way; at least it suggested he wasn't actually meant to wear these indefinitely. She didn't quite laugh, but she did grin. "Yes, but I meant before you went out in public."

He wasn't thrilled about going out in public as it was. Following the Lady Heterodyne docilely through the streets hit his pride in a way that being carried triumphally in a cage hadn't. After they were well out of the Castle he said, "He told them to be careful about letting me out."

"But he's not worried about my wandering around with you? Mm." She smiled. "He'll probably tell them to be careful coming home for dinner, too, in case you attack. Please don't," she added. 

"Because you're fond of them or because that won't do any good either?"

"It wouldn't, but mostly because I love them, yes. And much as he'd like it to be otherwise, they are... not altogether like their father." 

"Aren't they?"

She sighed. "I understand they told him they wanted to make friends outside Mechanicsburg. They didn't _actually_ mean for him to kidnap one."

"I guess that explains why they looked at me like he'd given them itchy socks for Christmas." 

Lady Teodora pressed a hand to her forehead. "I'll have to have a talk with those boys."

Klaus contemplated this prospect and grimaced. "Actually, is there any chance you could _not_ make it sound like I was insulted they didn't want me as a captive?"

"Mostly I'm planning to have words with them about abandoning you in a cage in a cold lab."

"I don't think they could exactly take me with them," Klaus said thoughtfully, before considering that this was probably not the best time to play devil's advocate.

"They're smart boys. They could have come up with something." 

Klaus opted against arguing further and simply followed Lady Teodora home. Even though it wasn't a very long walk, she offered to buy him food along the way and he discovered he was ravenous. (While acute hunger might have affected his estimate of the snail salad, it took enough of the edge off that he was pretty sure the fudge he got to try when they arrived was genuinely worth dragging her sons out of a laboratory for. Not worth being captured, but he wasn't going to let that stop him from enjoying it.) She also sent off for clothes for him by the expedient of walking out her front door and paying the nearest ten-year-old to run the errand, and then insisted on inspecting his injuries. 

"Most of this should heal well enough," she said critically, "but I'd like to use a healing engine on the concussion."

Klaus sat up abruptly. "You _have_ one? I've been wanting to look at those, but they're hard to find--" Erk. They probably weren't that hard to find if you knew who was making them and didn't mind making long trips to raid people. 

"Saturn actually built this one," Lady Teodora said, raising a whole new host of alarming prospects. "Although, yes, the first one he got as spoils of war. Not from the inventor, at least. I'd hate for him to be the only one making them." 

"I'm sure he won't be the only one copying them, either, once the idea gets around." Klaus's fingers practically itched. "May I see it?"

She held it away from him. "Not _yet_! Hold still. I'm afraid this will hurt."

He paused. "But does it _work_?" 

Her mouth quirked. "Yes."

It did work. And it did hurt, a weird searing itch wrapping around his head that made him sneeze so violently he almost dislodged the engine. Lady Teodora rather apologetically tied him down after that until it was done, and sang to him because he couldn't see straight to read. But when it _was_ done, his head was clear and unbruised and there was no lingering pain, and he was seriously tempted to try the engine on something else where he could watch it work. Instead he had it spread out in pieces on a workbench when the Heterodyne boys clattered in. 

They halted rather abruptly at the sight of him. "Oh," said William, turning back from the laboratory doorway to his mother. "You've got, er--" 

"Klaus Wulfenbach," Lady Teodora said. "I take it you didn't ask his name before you left him in your lab in the cold, any more than you checked on his injuries." 

To Klaus's surprise, they both looked rather shamefaced. "Um," said William, stopping to look at the workbench with an air of some concern. "Is that a healing engine?" 

"It was," Lady Teodora told him. "I used it on him already."

"It still is one," Klaus said, rather nettled. "I'll put it back together. Get your own." 

\-- _That_ had possibly not been the best move, he thought approximately one and a half seconds too late. William's eyebrows went up, but then he laughed. "That one _is_ ours," he pointed out. "Or Mother's, anyway." He peered at Klaus's notepaper upside-down. "Although apparently it's going to be a better one if you're refining the directive matrix." 

"...That's the idea." 

Lady Teodora cleared her throat. William looked sheepish. "I _am_ sorry about leaving you there. At the very least we should have put you in a warmer area and sent somebody to look after you. I'm sorry about getting you captured, too; I didn't know he was going to do that but I _really_ should have thought of it before I said anything." 

Klaus paused over this and then said, "Apology accepted." He arched an eyebrow at Barry. "You too. I thought I'd read your lips wrong earlier, but apparently not." 

Barry looked rather relieved. William offered a hand. "Bill Heterodyne. This is Barry." He'd had the names right, anyway. 

Klaus shook hands, feeling the situation was slightly surreal. "Klaus Wulfenbach." Even if their mother had already said that. 

Lady Teodora clapped her hands once. "Now go and wash for dinner. All of you."

"We did!" Barry protested. 

She looked suspicious. "Wash again where I can see you." After the bit with the glove Klaus thought this was probably a good point to insist on. 

Dinner was delivered to the door with impeccable timing, and Klaus asked somewhat warily what Bill and Barry had been working for when he, er, arrived. To his relief, it turned out to be a perfectly standard effort at building constructs, and this carried the conversation until Bill lost the ladle during enthusiastic gesticulation and Lady Teodora made a pointed suggestion that perhaps this was less than ideal dinner-table conversation. Klaus belatedly recalled being told that most non-Sparks did not want to hear too much about biology while eating. "I guess I shouldn't have brought that up. Here, I'll go get another ladle." 

This proved to be a less practical form of apology for offending his hostess than Klaus had hoped. He couldn't claim to be a connoisseur of kitchens, but the one in Lady Teodora's house proved to be pristine, unoccupied, peculiarly limited in equipment, and devoid of any discernible organizational scheme. 

By the time he found a ladle, he was mildly surprised they hadn't come to see if he was trying to escape instead. "Lady Teodora," he said, returning to put it carefully in the soup, "is your kitchen ever actually used?" 

"Occasionally for fun," she said, arching her eyebrows. "I did make the fudge there. I suppose I could get a cook in, but I haven't seen the need." 

"Ah. For some reason I imagined the fudge meant you were doing more of your own cooking. Whether by choice or necessity of living here." And the Lady Teodora had been born a princess and he knew perfectly well any number of those, however pleasant generally, might take offense at the idea of doing what was usually servants' work. _Well done, Klaus, perhaps you could try not annoying the people who are actually sorry you're a prisoner?_

"Ah, no." At least she sounded as if a puzzle had been cleared up, rather than insulted. "Saturn took the request for a separate house very graciously. I could have more live-in servants if I wanted them instead of having people come in to do things, he'll send food from the Castle or pay for whatever we ask for, and everyone in Mechanicsburg is meant to obey me... within reason, of course."

There was a note in her voice that made Klaus ask, "Within reason?"

"Naturally I can't have them disobey the Heterodynes." She tipped her head toward Bill. "Also within reason -- nobody actually paid any attention when he said he wanted to live entirely on strawberry jam." Bill mouthed that it still sounded like a good idea and Klaus tried not to laugh. "Nor can I interfere overmuch with their professions." 

That sounded reasonable in words and ominous in tone. Klaus opened his mouth to ask and then couldn't decide how, or if he really wanted to. 

Barry put a hand on his arm. "Don't go to the Fleshyards," he said. "We'll point out where." 

"I don't think anybody would grab you off the street or anything," Bill added hastily, perhaps under the impression that this was reassuring. "Although maybe we should label you just in case." 

Klaus eyed him a bit sourly. "What, 'Heterodyne property, do not disassemble'?" 

Bill rubbed the back of his neck. "Strangers seen wandering around here are most likely either personal guests or ambitious assassins. It might clarify things if you either wear a trilobite or stick with one of us." 

That was not exactly a denial. _He is trying to help,_ Klaus told himself. "Maybe I'll try tagging after you for a while," he said lightly. "I wouldn't mind seeing your lab again from outside a cage." 

Bill and Barry both perked up at that, and Klaus was reminded that his unenthusiastic jailers were children who'd apparently been craving a friend from outside Mechanicsburg. 

Lady Teodora cleared her throat and changed the subject before it could veer too far back into biology. "Try the lamb. Even if I would have been in some trouble if I'd had to produce it myself." Klaus glanced at her quickly but she mostly looked amused and a little intrigued. "Would you not?"

"I couldn't make it like _this_ on the first try," he said, and her eyebrows shot up. "But I've been taught the basics, yes, and the details are chemistry. More or less." 

"I admit, I wouldn't have expected that."

Klaus swallowed a bite of lamb and tried to stop analyzing the spices. "My parents think it's important for us to know how things work. Especially a town we're expected to run." That he might not ever see again. That he might have to _hope_ he never saw again, if it meant Saturn Heterodyne had decided it should get more direct attention. "What the people have to deal with, what we're relying on. Both for survival and the main economic pursuits." 

"Sensible," Teodora said, then wryly, "although I'm actually trying to _limit_ Bill and Barry's involvement in that last category." 

Right. "Well... even Mechanicsburg has something more to it than raiding, doesn't it? I saw farms on the way in." 

"It's very self-sufficient," Barry said. "Even under siege." 

"--Now you're going to have to explain that. You can't have room for farms _inside_ the walls." Klaus stopped. "Can you?" 

It was complicated. And involved details they might not have shared with anybody they expected to ever leave the town. The vegetable gardens, almost normal except for the possibility of being gifted with Heterodyne cultivars that would yield heavily but also potentially cause hallucinations or try to eat the gardener. The Dyne snails, which Klaus took note of because farther downstream they were rumored to be delicious but only eaten in the direst famine in case the Heterodynes had _done_ something to them. Mushroom farms in a cave system that honeycombed the valley and nearby mountains. Klaus found he rather badly wanted to know just how far you could conveniently travel from Mechanicsburg underground. 

Instead the conversation circled back around to things his parents thought were important, starting with skills and moving on to philosophy and ethics until Klaus started to feel as if he'd found himself back in school, and expected to produce a rigorous defense of the obvious. He finally managed to complete a thought while Bill's mouth was still full and looked over at Lady Teodora. "Am I being cross-examined, or what?"

She smiled faintly. "A little. I've gotten them books on the subject, but they don't normally hear a live person argue any of this except me." 

Okay. Not so obvious. And he was personally very, very lucky they listened to her. "Well," he said. "I guess I shouldn't complain."

* * *


End file.
